Gore Vidal: Perpetual War for Perpetual
Peace

By B. John Zavrel

America' undisputed master essayist Gore Vidal
is the author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays,
more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. The Times Literary
Supplement noted that Vidal's "United States (Essays 1952-1992) is
one of the greatest American books of the 20th century. It won the
1993 National Book Award.

His latest book, actually a collection of articles
titled "Perpertual War for Perpetual Peace" , published in 2002,
caused a sensation, if not a scandal in this country. His sharp
intellect and critical view of what the renowned author sees as wrong
in America, comes as a shock to the average American
reader.

The United States has been engaged in what the
great historian Charles A. Beard called "perpetual war for perpetual
peace." The Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearly
two hundred military incursions since 1945 in which the United States
has been the agressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming
essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September
11, 2002 (deemed too controversial to be published in America until
now), Gore Vidal challendes the comforting consensus following both
September 11th and Timothy McVey's bombing of the bederal building in
Oklahoma City: these were simply the acts of "evil-doers".

"None of these explanations made much sense, but
our rulers for more that half a century have made sure that we are
never to be told the truth about anything that our government has
done to other people, not to mention our own. That our ruling junta
might have seriously provoked McVeigh and Osama was never dealt with.
We consumers don't need to be told the why of anything. Certainly
those of us who are in the why-business have a difficult time in
getting through the corporate-sponsored American media, so I thought
it useful to describe here the various provocations on our side that
drove both bin Laden and McVeigh to such terrible acts," says Vidal
in his book.

And he continues, "the awesome physical damage
Osama and company did to us is as nothing compared to the knock-out
blow to our vanishing liberties: the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996
combined with the recent request to Congress for additional special
powers to wiretap without judicial order, to deport lawful permanent
residents, visitors, and undocumented immigrants without due
process." Could it be that the greatest victim of the September 11th
terror attacks will be American liberty? "Once alienated," Vidal
writes, "an unalienable right is apt to be forever lost."

The last article in the book, 'A Letter to Be
Delivered' he introduces with these words: 'I am writing this note a
dozen days before the inauguration of the loser of the year 2000
presidential election. We are now faced with a Japanese
seventeenth-century style arrangement: a powerless Mikado ruled by a
shogun vice president and his Pentagon warrior counselors. Do they
dream, as did the shoguns of yore, of the conquest of China? We shall
know more soon, I should think, than late. Sayonara.

This chapter is actually a letter (written for
Vanity Fair before the November 7, 2000 presidential election) to the
new President-Elect..

"Congratulations, Mr. President-Elect. Like
everyone else, I'm eagerly looking forward to your inaugural address.
As you must know by now, we could never get enough of your speeches
during the recent election in which the best man won, as he always
does in what Spiro Agnew so famously called "the greatest nation in
the country"...

...It is my impression, Mr. President-Elect, that
most Americans want our economy converted from war to peace.
Naturally, we still want to stand tall. We also don't want any of our
tax money wasted on health care because that would be Communism,
which we abhor. But we would like some of our tax dollars spent on
education...

...In any case, it is time we abandon our
generally unappreciated role as world policeman, currently wasting
Colombia, source of satanic drugs, while keeing Cuba, Iraq, and,
until recently, Serbia "in correction," as policepersons call house
arrest. This compulsive interference in the affairs of other states
is expensive and pointless. Better we repair our own country with
"internal improvements"...

...since we have literally targeted our enemies,
the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, Rogues will take out our
cities, presumable from spaceships. So to protect ourselves, the
Ronald Reagan Memorial Nuclear Space Shield must be set in place at
an initial cost of $ 60 billion even though, as of July, tests of the
system, no matter how faked by the Pentagon, continued to fail. The
fact that, according to polls, a majority of your constituents
believe that we already have such a shield makes it possible for you
to say you're updating it and then do nothing. After all, from 1949
to 1999 the United States spent $ 7.1 trillion on "national defense."
As a result, the national debt is $ 5.6 trillion, of which $ 3.6
trillion is owed to the public, and $ 2 trillion to the Social
Security-Medicare Trust Funds, all due to military spending and to
the servicing of the debt thus incurred...

...fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old
republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage
perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement?
February 27, 1947. Place: The White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman,
Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional
leaders. Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he
could have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hell
out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman
obliged. THe perpetual war began. Representative government of, by,
and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America
enjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays for
in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those
who have bought the government also own the media. Now, with the
revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new
and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies
as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of
all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike
unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations
but do not pay our dues...we bomb, invade, subvert other states.
Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of
legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in
Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate
America and its enforcer, the imperial military
machine..."

Gore Vidal's sharp wit and formidable intellect
make for fascinating reading, whether one agrees with his ideas and
conclusions or not. What matters is that we are open-minded enough to
read his book, and examine and consider the ideas presented in it on
their strength, and finally come to our own conclusions, based on our
observation of everyday events as they unfold in the
future.